Death comes even to kings.
From the Roxburghe Ballads (1847).
University of Victoria
Library.

The many plagues which decimated England and Europe helped
shape a culture in which death was an ever-present yet
mysterious force in daily life. Images of corpses and
skeletons abound in the art of the 14th and 15th centuries,
often in connection with the medieval Death Dance*.

In medieval art and iconography, the Dance of Death is
depicted as a carnival in which skeletons and corpses revel
along with the living. Grinning skeletons lead people off to
the afterlife, often with an air of joviality and humor.

The Dance of Death was a popular festival with origins in the
plague-ridden medieval period. Like most rowdy gatherings,
the Death Dance was mainly an opportunity for common people
to dispense with the usual social constraints and enjoy some
licentiousness. Not surprisingly, this unusual festival
inspired imagery and themes which were central to the popular
mythology surrounding death.

In a related artistic tradition, armies of conquering
skeletons sweep through villages riding carts piled high with
the dead. Such apocalyptic images represented what many
thought was the end of the world.

The prevalence of death imagery in medieval artwork may seem
obsessive, but this cultural phenomenon was a vital part of
medieval society's attempt to comprehend a very real danger.
In an era with high mortality rates, mass deaths due to
disease, and little knowledge of medicine and hygiene, death
was an inescapable mystery. Whole villages and urban
districts could be wiped out for no comprehensible reason. It
is not surprising that the decimation caused by the plague
was considered to be a sign of God's displeasure.

An interesting side-effect of the plague was the belief that
death was the great leveler: your time would come whether you
were a prince or a pauper -- a fact that Hamlet
was particularly
aware of*.

The imagery and themes of the Dance of Death are central to
the graveyard scene in Hamlet. As Hamlet talks with
the gravedigger, various skulls are unearthed and casually
tossed aside. Hamlet comments that regardless of status,
breeding, and worth in life, death reduces everyone to so
many old bones, knocked about by a lowly gravedigger's
shovel:

Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at
loggets with them? Mine ache to think on't
(5.1.91)

The questions Hamlet asks become even more personal when he
finds the skull of an old friend -- the jester, Yorick.

The influence of the Death Dance in this scene lies not only
in Hamlet's musings on death as the ultimate equalizer but
also in the simple and powerful image of a living human
holding another human's skull (or lying on the ground
face-to-face with it, as Mel Gibson does in Zeferelli's film
version). Given the fact that Yorick's prior occupation was
court
Fool, the image of capering skeletons has
special relevance to this scene. Like the hand-in-hand dances
of the quick and the dead, Hamlet and Yorick represent the
inevitable, egalitarian, and capricious nature of death.

In a similarly democratic fashion earlier in the play, Hamlet
specifically remarks:

We fat all creatures else to fat us and we fat ourselves
for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but
variable service -- two dishes but to one table.
(4.2.21-4)

Death in Shakespeare's London

Public executions, mutilations, and corpses on display were
common sights to the residents and playgoers of Shakespeare's
London. London bridge, on the way from the city to the Globe
theater, was a common place for the exhibition of traitors'
heads. The Globe theater
itself was located next to a bear-baiting ring, and
many other theaters did double duty as places to see both
drama and blood-sports.

Most forms of publicly-endorsed violence shared an important
trait: they were spectacles staged to capture the attention
of an audience. People from all walks of life would make an
outing to see an execution just as people today might to a
sporting event. Bear-baiting,
bull-baiting, and
cockfighting went hand-in-hand with drama as popular
entertainments, and often shared the same building.

This connection between violence and entertainment had a
strong influence on the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Death
and other forms of violence on stage were commonplace. The
brutality in early plays such as Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus, Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, and
Marlowe'sJew of Malta
is still to be found in later plays like King Lear,
Macbeth, and the extrordinary ingenuity of such
revenge plays as The Revenger's Tragedy. Then, as
now, death and violence were exploited for their theatrical
potential.

Footnotes

Dancing in the grave

In medieval art and iconography, the Dance of Death is
depicted as a carnival in which skeletons and corpses revel
along with the living. Grinning skeletons lead people off to
the afterlife, often with an air of joviality and humor.

The Dance of Death was a popular festival with origins in the
plague-ridden medieval period. Like most rowdy gatherings,
the Death Dance was mainly an opportunity for common people
to dispense with the usual social constraints and enjoy some
licentiousness. Not surprisingly, this unusual festival
inspired imagery and themes which were central to the popular
mythology surrounding death.

In a related artistic tradition, armies of conquering
skeletons sweep through villages riding carts piled high with
the dead. Such apocalyptic images represented what many
thought was the end of the world.

"Alas, poor Yorick . . ."

The imagery and themes of the Dance of Death are central to
the graveyard scene in Hamlet. As Hamlet talks with
the gravedigger, various skulls are unearthed and casually
tossed aside. Hamlet comments that regardless of status,
breeding, and worth in life, death reduces everyone to so
many old bones, knocked about by a lowly gravedigger's
shovel:

Did these bones cost no more the breeding but to play at
loggets with them? Mine ache to think on't
(5.1.91)

The questions Hamlet asks become even more personal when he
finds the skull of an old friend -- the jester, Yorick.

The influence of the Death Dance in this scene lies not only
in Hamlet's musings on death as the ultimate equalizer but
also in the simple and powerful image of a living human
holding another human's skull (or lying on the ground
face-to-face with it, as Mel Gibson does in Zeferelli's film
version). Given the fact that Yorick's prior occupation was
court
Fool, the image of capering skeletons has
special relevance to this scene. Like the hand-in-hand dances
of the quick and the dead, Hamlet and Yorick represent the
inevitable, egalitarian, and capricious nature of death.

In a similarly democratic fashion earlier in the play, Hamlet
specifically remarks:

We fat all creatures else to fat us and we fat ourselves
for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but
variable service -- two dishes but to one table.
(4.2.21-4)

From scaffold to stage

Most forms of publicly-endorsed violence shared an important
trait: they were spectacles staged to capture the attention
of an audience. People from all walks of life would make an
outing to see an execution just as people today might to a
sporting event. Bear-baiting,
bull-baiting, and
cockfighting went hand-in-hand with drama as popular
entertainments, and often shared the same building.

This connection between violence and entertainment had a
strong influence on the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. Death
and other forms of violence on stage were commonplace. The
brutality in early plays such as Shakespeare's Titus
Andronicus, Kyd's Spanish Tragedy, and
Marlowe'sJew of Malta
is still to be found in later plays like King Lear,
Macbeth, and the extrordinary ingenuity of such
revenge plays as The Revenger's Tragedy. Then, as
now, death and violence were exploited for their theatrical
potential.